Great British Energy” would be a minor player in electricity production for a very long time and an insignificant contributor to the country’s overall energy mix.

“Great British Energy” refers to Starmer’s promise of “A new, ­publicly owned green energy company to bring down bills.”

Where to begin with this nonsense? Well let’s correct the terminology first. What this refers to (the “green energy” bit) can only be power (electricity) generation. Britain’s energy mix will continue to be substantially reliant on hydrocarbons for transportation, home heating and a number of other oil/gas specific applications:

The use of renewables for power generation is significant and rising, but it represents little more than 5% of the country’s overall Energy consumption. ( see graphic above).

The only significant “green” options for electricity generation are Wind and (possibly) Solar. The private sector invests in Windpower subject to the returns being adequate. Government can encourage this with subsidy but the value of the electricity generated is broadly determined on the open market.

A “publicly owned” Windpower and/or Solar company for power generation would have no significant advantage over the private sector. It’s generating costs (including the very high upfront capital costs of the turbines) would be little different to the private sector. The need not to pay dividends would benefit operating margins but in truth the effect of this would be marginal. To “bring down bills” is another term for “subsidy”.

Government can subsidise electricity prices if it chooses to but why would they do that ? Most of our expenditure on energy is on petrol for our cars and gas to heat our homes. Labour’s “green energy company” cannot have any effect on the prices of these essentials. And the claim that there will be overall lower bills is a chimera.

Around 30% of Britain’s electricity is produced from renewables by private sector companies. Assuming these are not nationalised the private sector will remain the dominant renewables provider for a long time to come. “Great British Energy” would be a minor player in electricity production for a very long time and an insignificant contributor to the country’s overall energy mix. It’s smoke and mirrors.